Monday, July 31, 2017

Recently, there has been some discussion on Face Book about a reported magical war that has pitted a loose confederation of Witches and Pagans who have directed their magical powers to magically marginalize Donald Trump and the Trump administration against members of a Golden Dawn faction. I am referring to the infamous binding ritual that was and still is supposedly being performed during the dark of the moon by Witches with a particular liberal bent, and aggressively opposing them is a certain Golden Dawn chief and his wife and their supporters, whose names are better left unsaid. I had decided not to offer my opinion about this so-called magical war because it seemed to me to be ridiculous and nonsensical at the outset. I have my reasons for considering what has transpired to be dubious and not particularly worthy of comment. That is because, as an experienced Witch and ritual magician, I understand how a binding ritual is supposed to work and to what uses it can be successfully applied, and where it would be practically useless. I also have my theories about the efficacy of working magic to impact a celebrity or a person in a position of national prominence. A national figure-head, like a president, is probably beyond the means for most magical practitioners who would like to bend or influence his or her decisions, manipulate, or even cause him or her to experience misfortune or worse, without some kind of direct access to that individual.

This is not to say that such magic is impossible or that magical attacks do not happen, but in my experience they occur rarely for some not-so obvious reasons, namely the efficacy and competence of magical practitioners who are mostly from the privileged economic classes, such as the white middle class in the U.S. It would seem that not living in disadvantaged poverty removes some of the cutting edge of ruthless passion needed for aggressive magic that fighting for survival would give a person who lives day to day in the urban blight of a third-world life-style. I myself have been magically attacked just twice in my long history, but in both cases these actions were performed by people that I knew and who had intimate contact with me. I will briefly discuss later in this article what I personally experienced when I was attacked so my readers will have something to compare against when attempting to determine if they or individuals they know have been or are under magical attack.

In all of the decades that I have practiced magic I have never experienced the kind of polarized world of black magicians fighting against white magicians for the ultimate cosmic supremacy of the world, or good vs. evil as depicted in stories, comic books and the tall tales of some magicians. As far as I am able to deduce, the world just doesn’t work that way. We don’t live in a Manichean world dominated by the constant struggle of good against evil, or light against darkness. As a Witch, I see the powers of light and darkness always mingling and interchanging, and that they represent a kind of natural cycle that is much more like the seasons experienced in the temperate latitudes of our planet. Life and death are part of the naturally occurring cycle of manifestation that determines the nature of corporeal existence, and with it are the constant changing seasons, the natural flow of day and night, and the many variations in these cycles that happen quite naturally.

Nature has no moral high-ground, and the laws and religious doctrines of human ingenuity are based wholly on the culturally determined beliefs and opinions of people that change over time, and that are different, depending on one’s location in the world. If anything, the natural interplay of light of darkness makes for a world that is impermanent, at times ephemeral and always locked in the constant forward movement of time itself. It is also important to understand that all of the national players in the world of geopolitics are beset with flaws as well as virtues, and they have as much darkness about their world persona as light. There is no solely good actors fighting against completely bad actors. It’s more like variations of bad actors - some better and some worse. The US is just as much a negative force in the world as it is a supposed force for good, and in some cases, it’s a kind of mindless force of destruction and calumny.

When it comes to human-based social morality, the world of mankind is decidedly gray. There are many layers of complexity when attempting to determine moral truths, and what seems to be valued as something good could actually be harmful in the long term, and of course the inverse can also be true. A case in point is where religious based law (seemingly good) is used to govern a group of modern people regardless of their actual beliefs (an enforced theocracy - very bad).

Equally sticky is where economic justifications are used to reinforce the terrible inequalities between economic classes, such as when the propaganda for a meritocracy is used to hide the inherent inequalities of class and privilege (basic libertarianism). Another case is where radical changes are required for the world economic model that is dependent upon fossil fuels which are not sustainable in the long term, but denied any veracity by those currently in power. Here, the short-term gain is considered “good” for resisting such change as opposed to the long term consequences, such as the immanent decline of available fossil fuel sources and the climate changing pollution that they cause. Preparing and making changes today for the future often has an immediate price tag that might seem to be harsh and difficult (bad) , but in the long term, will be more than compensated for in the future (good).

It is sufficient to say that we live in world of opposing views and even sometimes, polarized politics; but still, there are provable facts which cannot be denied except by willful deceit, blind ignorance and the greed of short term gain. This kind of complicated and troubling morality particularly besets those who practice magic, whether in engaging in unethical practices, or believing that one is a victim of someone else’s unethical practices.

Anyway, one of the things that I wanted to discuss with my readers is that a practical Witch has a certain variable body of lore in which to perform various types of magical operations. A binding rite is one of the more malefic kinds of magic that a Witch might deploy. I call it malefic because it causes the target to experience a kind of paralysis of action, and it can be specific to a situation or type of action or it can be generalized. In Hoodoo, this kind of magic would be classified as a “crossing” and is usually quite common, although it is more often a kind of self-crossing where the individual is engaging in self-defeating actions or pursuits. It is not a harmless kind of defensive magic, since it represents an aggressive action against an individual or group.

If someone who is under the power of this kind of spell, through their own stubbornness or passion, attempts to push through the magical obstruction or somehow overpower it then that person can experience real physical pain or even death. Imagine someone tugging against their bindings if they were tied up instead of just relaxing (or flexing) until they could be loosened. They might accidently choke themselves to death. There are ways to get through or around a binding as well, but the best way is to initially relax and not attempt to force a release. Then when the binding loosens somewhat, as it will, an uncrossing rite can be quickly and efficiently performed. Like most magical work, it is not fool-proof and subject to the variations of the circumstances and individuals involved. One important consideration is that the Witch who is performing a binding must have something specific at hand that can be used as a direct link. A binding rite is an intimate kind of spell, which means that it must be employed on someone with whom the spell caster or his or her client has some kind of close social connection.

All forms of curses, love spells and any other kind of manipulative person-to-person magic has to be performed against targets that are intimate in order for the spell to have any chance of succeeding. There are also consequences, since such an intimate spell connects the issuer to the target, however briefly, and also there is a need for mundane actions or steps to increase the probabilities for success. Spells like these require a powerful link, since they are operating through the Thaumaturgic rules or laws of magic, such as the Law of Association (which contains the Law of Contact and the Law of Similarities). That magical link can assume many different forms, but the best kind would be what I call a material or gross link, such as hair follicles, nail parings, blood, or some other similar object extracted from the target individual. It could also be something once worn (and not washed) or a stolen prized possession. Still, any kind of intimate object or mental association that can tie or connect the subject with the object can function as a formal link. There is also a need for an emotional passion, similar to personal hatred or a strong desire to inflict or victimize someone - that is the magical power associated with this kind of working. The mundane actions that would accompany this working would consist of a form of contact, a means of providing a kind of subtle emotional blackmail, enabling the victim to helplessly realize their plight.

As a rule, then, these kinds of spells are best employed by someone who is close to the target, and the closer that relationship is, the more focused and successful the spell will be. The farther away and less intimate the subject is to the object, the less likely that the results will be successful, particularly since there will be little or any mundane steps employed to help the spell. That means that a binding rite is a very poor choice to influence or manipulate someone who is a complete stranger. For that kind of magic it is better to employ the assistance of a spirit that can be used to perform a malefic act and function as an intermediary. Obviously angels couldn’t be readily used, but certain classes of demigods, neutral spirits or demons could be so employed. Still, the simple lack of any kind of mundane steps to help the spirit evocation produce the expected results would be problematical. In other words, I believe that such a magical operation would be something of a long-shot to produce any useful results.

Another factor that would be operating is that a public figure has an egregore in addition to his or her actual intimate personality. If someone were to attempt to work magic on a public figure without some kind of intimate connection then they would be focusing on an egregore that is actually shared by many people in the public domain, and it wouldn’t likely have much of an effect on the person behind that persona. This is the primary reason why long-distance magical spells that are directed at a celebrity or a politician have little or no effect. A magician has to find a way to penetrate the egregore in order to reach the person behind it. It is a difficult proposition when using the correct magical tools and an impossible one when attempting to use a spell that is associated with an intimate magical link, such as a binding.

The Witches who consorted to work a binding spell against President Trump showed at the very least a complete lack of knowledge and understanding about how such a magical operation would work. Of course, if the binding spell was guaranteed to fail, as I believe it would be, any counter magic using the same technique reversed would be just as ripe for failure. What I saw in this action and counter action were two groups of people who were more likely to get some risible publicity from the general public (except maybe from Christian Fundamentalists) than they would have any kind of impact on Trump or his administration. It was, overall, a publicity stunt simply because you never broadcast your intentions about a potential magical working if you intend it to work, and both parties engaged in this kind of grandstanding. So, I saw this war of words and intentions and just ignored it as actually meaningless and poor press for both parties. It did show me that both groups failed to understand the basics about magic, such as what I have outlined above. Yet that didn’t stop them one bit, and the antics that are now being played out with ever greater stakes and imaginings are even more ridiculous. Magic doesn’t work that way, so if you really want to know anything about magic, you can be assured that neither party knows what they are talking about.

Consider for a moment, if you will, that Donald J. Trump has been a public figure and a celebrity for decades. He has done enough in his lifetime to various individuals and groups to earn him a great deal of justifiable hatred and animosity. He is, in a word, a monstrosity of a human being with little or no redeeming values. He is also loved and cherished amongst a certain crowd of individuals, although whether through ignorance, naivety or spiteful affirmation is not actually relevant. The fact that there are people who love and believe in the Donald will in fact make it nearly impossible to penetrate his public egregore in order to perform some kind of magical operation against him and the members of his administration.

Perhaps when his popularity tanks and thereby weakens his egregore, it might be possible to target the man behind the persona, but with someone as narcissistic as Trump, I think that it would be a waste of time and effort. For the Donald, any attention, whether negative or positive, is energy that feeds his beast. The most painful thing for him would be getting ignored or shown to be wholly irrelevant. While he is the POTUS, he will be getting an enormous amount of attention, both positive and negative. Where Trump is vulnerable is with those who have an intimate connection with him. His close advisors and members of his administration work under a tacit agreement of loyalty and fealty, not to mention a non-disclosure agreement. His friends are few indeed, and they must continually show a kind of steadfast loyalty that only kings, emperors or madmen would require in order for such friendships to continue.

It is for this reason that I feel that magic directed against Donald Trump just feeds the beast and doesn’t really make any difference. Donald Trump has lived a charmed life so far, since every action that might have sunk him or his businesses has instead found him with new avenues to exploit and new resources to use in his many business and political ventures. If Trump were anyone else, without such monetary power, celebrity and such an overarching business persona, he would have been brought to ground a long time ago. Instead, he has the knack for pulling off amazing scams and landing gently on his feet no matter how dire things seem to be. This is still true today, since how he has behaved as a president would caused anyone else to be quickly impeached. I could say that Trump already lives a charmed life, but I would never say that it will continue like this for the foreseeable future. I believe that things are already changing, but they have more to do with Trump doing stupid things and trying to get away with greater outrages while pretending to function as the POTUS. Eventually, things have to give, and Trump’s charmed life will ultimately fail to protect him from the consequences of his own actions. In the end, it will be Trump who will damage and destroy himself because he pushed even his own good fortune far beyond the threshold of what is tolerated and acceptable even by those who fervently support him.

If Donald Trump falls, it will be his own fault and not attributed to the actions of some magician who tried to bring him down. His fall will be the epic lore of the Hero Myth tragedy, where the hero is ultimately brought down by his own hubris. We can only hope that in time our democratic traditions, checks and balances, and the rule of law will prevent Trump from destroying our representative democracy, and I feel a certain confidence that these forces along with the energized political opposition will bring down Trump and his presidency.

If anyone wants to work magic against the Trump regime they could do no better than registering to vote, joining the political opposition, getting politically engaged, running for office and becoming an active member of the resistance. What better magic is there than uniting with like minds and taking on the establishment that has become corrupted and moribund. This is a case where people-power takes back the country so that it is a nation run by the people and for the people, and not one that favors just the 1%. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, so this is a political and even a magical rule that will seal the fate of all would-be tyrants and wealthy power-brokers. That is, at least, my fervent hope and how I am guiding my own path in these dark and troubling times.

Where does that leave the magical war that is going on during the New Moon phases between those who seek to thwart Trump and his administration and those who seek to thwart those who are seeking to thwart Trump? They are engaged in a bit of notoriety and minor celebrity, and not much else. Even the claims by that Golden Dawn chief and his wife of having near death experiences due to evil black magic, i.e., the destruction of a fancy sports car and the death of a pet must be seen as a kind of Kabuki theater that has little or no magical substance behind it. It is easy to blame accidents, neglect and personal foolishness on the malefic actions of some nebulous foe of evil Witches and Satanists practicing black magic and sending out lightening bolts at the duly elected President.

The purported harm supposedly occurred when these two individuals decided to channel all of that black magical power through themselves and harmlessly into the earth. The only problem with this idea is that first, a binding rite doesn’t send out any kind of bolt (it emanates, like all intimate magical spells) and the fact that the magic likely went nowhere, there wasn’t anything really to defect or absorb. In their sacrificial act, they might have taken upon themselves all of the negative ill-will that everyone who dislikes the Donald is sending to his egregore. However, I actually doubt that they even managed to do that, since it would have been more like a chaotic cacophony of various emotional energies and thoughts without any real directive or cohesion. If anything, such a connection would have been merely one of countless millions, and it would have been confusing and perhaps even overwhelming, but not dramatically so. Yet they reported an immediate deflection of negative forces that nearly killed them. How very melodramatic, and also for me and many others, unbelievable.

For their presumed sacrifices, I suspect that they might think that they should get some kind of award or medal from Trump, except that few are paying any attention. I have shown that it is very doubtful that a magical battle was the cause of these dramatic occurrences, so what did happen was the product of a very untethered imagination, that and maybe rampant paranoia and some truly irrational thinking. As a story, it mythologizes the processes and the persons, so it is obviously a form of extreme hyperbole or self-delusion.

The real question is how can you know when you are indeed being magically attacked? What is the difference between experiencing a real magical assault or one that is imagined for various reasons? There are some things that can be done to help make this determination, and this is where having a good peer group and a rational mind that can examine phenomena with the help of critical thinking are priceless gifts.

The two times that I personally experienced a magical attack were not at first easily identifiable as an attack. It was only obvious to me after some rational consideration, and also eliminating all other possibilities. In both cases the people who magically assaulted me did not tell me they were going to attack. How I determined that this was happening was that I experienced emotions, thoughts and inclinations that were not my own. I felt a tremendous guilt for things I hadn’t even done, and a form of self-loathing unlike my typical buoyant and forgiving manner. I had bad dreams, morbid thoughts, unreasonable fears that would suddenly strike and then disappear, and more importantly, I found myself dwelling on the person who had attacked me.

This process wasn’t sudden, it was a lot like getting a cold or the flu. It started out making me feel that something was not right and the feelings of something bad continued to grow over time. The real determiner is that all of this phenomena was alien to my being - it was another mind, emotions and even a will seeking to subdue and overcome me. Divination rites revealed a general state of complete confusion and indecisiveness that was overpowering me. Discussions with others revealed that I seemed to be emanating something that was palpably negative and self-destructive.

Another clue is that when I engaged with my spiritual discipline, performing liturgical rites, all of these effects completely disappeared for a short while. As you can imagine, undergoing a spiritual regimen (fasting, meditation in sacred space, performing liturgical rites) for a set period of time could readily defeat this external phenomenon altogether. In fact, that is exactly how I short-circuited and eliminated what was externally trying to invade my being and overcome my will. It was similar to an exorcism, except that I was functioning as both the exorcist and the subject of the exorcism.

Magical effects, as far as I understand them, don’t produce pyrotechnical phenomenon, so what is realistically experienced is more subtle, unexpected and stealthy. Being magically attacked is a lot like getting ill and slowly unraveling instead of being instantly blasted by a lightening bolt. People who tell me stories involving their dramatic experiences with ‘awesome’ magical pyrotechnics are usually engaging in excessive exaggeration or the ‘telling of tall tales’ rather than telling the truth. Those who claim to have engaged in mythic epic battles with the powers of darkness wielded by evil black magicians are either writing a fictional work or just plain lying. It doesn’t matter if the lie is due to self-delusion or it is a deliberate falsehood to glorify oneself, it still is a troubling personal defect that is a warning to oneself and others.

This rule of thumb can also apply to someone who complains about being magically attacked by someone or some group. As an author I get occasional emails from individuals requesting my help because they are being magically attacked. They usually describe an implausible or unbelievable series of occurrences and blame someone or some group for all of the bad things that are happening to them. I find myself feeling sympathy for them, but it seems obvious when I examine what they are claiming that they are actually suffering from some kind of mental illness or experiencing an internal psychic trauma. Their stories are full of bizarre imaginings and fanciful considerations, and of course, it all happened so suddenly.

Often these individuals live far away from me, and I feel that there is nothing that I could do to help them other than to tell to seek out professional help. I am not in the business of working magic for paying clients, and I think that I would dislike taking advantage of someone who is broken and experiencing psychological trauma. My heart breaks to read their emails, but I try to keep a level head and advise them to get professional help from someone near by. I have no desire to add to their confusion or pain, and I hope that my lack of engagement doesn’t make me look cold or cruel, but that is the reality that I have to face. A good magician always knows his or her limitations, and I am not a licensed therapist. Someone who hasn’t learned that lesson yet or refuses to know their own boundaries are setting themselves up for a world of hurt.

Saturday, June 24, 2017

One of the problems about getting old is that sickness and infirmity can intervene and completely disrupt one’s magical plans and ambitions. When I was in my 20's, I had the stamina to work magic all weekend long with minimal sleep and not feel the physical effects. Even 10 years ago, I was still able to work magic for long periods of time without feeling too tired or lacking in energy to complete what I started. The years of 2009 and 2010 were filled with many magical accomplishments. Just five years ago I had completed my own talismanic version of the Portae Lucis and was looking forward to working on some other projects that were on my list of important magical ordeals to accomplish in the coming year. However, my health problems intervened and I wasn’t able to continue any further major workings until the present time. The year 2013 was something of a lost year for me, considering all of the problems that I faced, and the next two years were also filled with health issues that I had to somehow resolve. The latest event was some needed eye surgery that took place a few months ago, but now that event has made it important to get further medical help for my eyes.

Of course, all the while I was dealing with these issues, I was also having to put in a lot of extra time into my job, thus ensuring that I had even less time to devote to my magical work and practices. Now, some five years later, I want to pick up where I left off and continue with my magical work. It’s a good thing that I wrote down what my objectives were in some of my blog articles, so all I have to do is to examine and ponder over them because they are already written up. I have found that a particular blog article that I wrote around 4 years ago has all of the occult issues that I wanted to address and tasks that I wanted to work, unfortunately none of which saw any activity since they were written. I haven’t been completely neglectful, particularly in the area of my studies and writings, but I also have been unable to begin any new magical work since that time. You can find that blog article here, written at the start of the New Year for 2013. Little did I realize then that I was about to undergo some really difficult times regarding my health and my career.

“My temple area has seen the greatest extent of neglect, since I haven’t worked any magick since completing the seventh and final planetary talisman. Things have been just too busy for me to even contemplate another magical project. I have made offerings of incense to the Gods and my ancestors, but not much beyond that. However, I have decided that the time is right to start picking up the threads of my magical practice and start engaging in some of the projects that I had to postpone. I also need to reconnect and align myself to my personal Deities and my pagan spirituality on a deeper and more profound level than what I have been doing in the last several months.”

I have added an occasional Mass rite and periodic meditation sessions to what I have been doing in my temple as of late - at least until this latest working.

“As usual, I begin each year by putting together a list of things that I would like to accomplish. I might not succeed in completing all of the tasks, but if I can manage a few of them, then I consider that year to be successful. That list starts out containing the things that I didn’t get around to doing the previous year, if I consider them to be important and relevant. High on that list is my desire to complete the workings associated with what I have called the Portae Tenebris working, which is the opposite of the Portae Lucis. I have placed my seven talismans on my central altar protected by a veil with the intention of doing these sets of rituals, and I found no time to actually perform them. The talismans are still sitting there where I last left them, waiting for me to engage with this magic. I have decided that even though the Winter Solstice has come and gone, we are still in the great period of winter darkness. I am planning on picking up the threads of this working in the next week or so, and thereby bring it to completion.”

This rite, the Portae Tenebris, will require some work on my part. Today, I have no idea how this ritual will look except for a vague sense about the broad outlines. I am not even sure that it is necessary, although it does seem interesting to speculate about it.

“Another pair of magical challenges are for me to invoke at least four of the spirits of the Theurgia-Goetia using the new ritual lore that I developed and wrote some time ago. I would also like to perform some invocations of the ha-Shem angels and some Goetic demons. I am hoping to achieve these workings between now and the end of April, when winter begins to recede from the northern Midwest. If I get to perform some of these workings, then I will have quite a bit to report about my experiences, and I will be able to say that the new ritual lore has been thoroughly vetted.”

This was some important magical work that I also had to put on hold, but I hope to re-engage with it this coming autumn. The list of things that I need to do has become quite large, as I peruse my plans from over four years ago.

So, that was what I was writing back in early 2013, but what I didn’t know is that a series of health issues hit me, one after another, that pretty much put all of plans in limbo. I had accomplished quite a bit up to that point in time, but now it was time to deal with the fact that I was aging and dealing with age related illnesses. I caught a really vicious flu in May of that year, and I was so debilitated that it took me a couple of months to fully recover from it.

Then as the year progressed, I discovered that I had a serious sleeping disorder, called sleep apnea. I got hooked on a prescription drug called Ambien, a sleeping aid, and had to wean myself off of it. Towards the end of the year, I started using a C-PAP breathing machine to assist my breathing and avoid succumbing to apnea related sleeping issues. I had to adjust to this contracption, learn all about sleep hygiene and I am continuing to monitor my sleep to ensure that I get enough rest each day. I also had a cataract removed from my left eye and now need the one on the right removed as well. I got Lyme’s disease from a tick bite in my yard in August 2015 and managed to recover from that bout of illness. I had surgery to correct the tracking of my eyes this last January, and I lost a molar, soon to be replaced with an implant crown. Yeah, I seem to be slowly falling apart, perhaps more so in the last few years.

These are just symptoms of old age catching up with me. I have had a great run of good health with little pain, sickness or difficulties my whole life, and now I have to be careful what I eat, how much I eat, what I drink, that I get more exercise, be more active, and ensure that I get to bed early enough to get enough sleep each night. This is a strange world to suddenly have to accommodate myself, but it is typical of a person who is getting older and undergoing the slow decrepitude of advanced age. My health issues are minor inconveniences when compared to the debilitating and painful medical conditions that some who are my age are experiencing. I am, so far, lucky that what I have undergone has had some ready medical solutions. Someday, I will likely start to really experience some of the more unpleasant and unhappy occurrences that happen to all mortal men and women as they undergo their final decade or so of life. Hopefully, I can keep that from happening for another twenty years or so.

Anyway, once a series of distractions occur, it can be difficult to break the ice and get back into the game of working complex and involved magical ordeals. I decided that I would do something this late spring to accomplish that goal, so I set about trying to picking up the thread of where I left off in the late autumn of 2012. Since I had completed my own talismanic version of the Portae Lucis for the Summer Solstice of 2012, I decided that I had to do something for the Solstice of 2017, which was the fifth year anniversary. I set out to, in some way, repeat what I had done back then, and I began to plan out my working.

One thing I want to make clear to my readers is that a magical ordeal is not the same as just working some magical rituals to achieve a very specific and short-term end. An ordeal, as I define it, is a transformative initiation. It operates using the power of ecstasy and also exaltation. It is highly empowering, very deep and it can be dreadfully painfully, because it changes one’s mind and being at the very deepest level. Transformation can be something that causes the magician to feel momentarily transcendent, but it also unleashes the realization of truths and insights that are humbling and even humiliating, especially if they are resisted. Transformation, when it occurs within a magical field, forces the magician who is undergoing it to see the truth about themselves and their place in the world at that moment, and this can be quite sobering and even traumatically distressful.

Transformation cuts through personal bias, hubris, self-delusion, and personal fantasies like a hot knife through butter. A self that is defined mostly by self-deceit and delusion will not withstand this potent realization of truth. Therefore, transformation can also be dis-empowering and even self-destructive to a magician undergoing a profound ordeal, particularly if he or she has a proclivity for delusion and falsehood. The most important rule that any magician can follow when undergoing such a massive and potent change is to be flexible, completely open and willing to change and adjust all of his or her ideals and beliefs when the truth is realized. Failure to change when presented with the truth is the painful moment when a magician catastrophically fails to grow or evolve. Personal momentum and the magical process itself are halted and short-circuited. The issues thereby uncovered remain unresolved, and they stay that way until the magician is finally able to see and act on the truth so revealed. Such a refusal to apply truth to self belief will stunt a magician’s growth, and over time, cause his or her being to regress.

Because transformative ordeals cannot be forced or deliberately manufactured, it would seem that a deliberate magical working targeting an ordeal process wouldn’t be able to cause such an ordeal to occur. However, if the internal state of the magician is ripe for such an occurrence then performing an ordeal based magical working will certainly trigger one to happen. I believe that was the case for me when I performed the talismanic version of the Portae Lucis. I experienced a great deal of emotional disruption and even health issues in the years following the performance of this ordeal. It was more powerful and far reaching than anything I had previously undergone, and aside from the momentary glory I achieved, I also realized the truth of the diminishment of my vitality associated with aging. I also learned that I couldn’t take my health or material privileges for granted.

Anyway, since I had finally made it through this long period of five years and I had restored, to some extent, my health and vitality, I decided to get back in the game. I determined that I would revisit my Portae Lucis working, which I performed five years ago, and do some kind of working that would pull the threads left off then and bring them into the present. I began to meditate on this task and try to figure out exactly what I would do. As I said, I had completed that ordeal back in June of 2012, but then continued to produce the semi-precious metalic talismans for the three planets not covered in that working so that I would have the complete set of seven. The talismanic Portae Lucis working only focused on the planets of the Moon, Sun and Saturn, with Mercury being the place-marker for the magician, and this was also how the original Portae Lucis was constructed. Therefore, to celebrate this accomplishment, which was my last major working, I had decided to perform the last part of it once again. You can find the blog articles where I have posted my magical diaries from that time here and here.

Additionally, I wanted to attempt some other magical workings during this time frame to experiment with the efficacy of two new rituals that I had recently written. I recently wrote the Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite, which eliminates any kind of obstruction or “crossing,” and the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual, which employs the seven metalic planetary-talismanic devices as a magical machine. Both of these new rituals were envisioned by me a few years ago, but I didn’t have the inspiration or insight to write them up. That changed over the Winter Solstice, and in performing these rites as part of the Portae Lucis commemoration I would be bringing my continuing magical working regimen into this current renewed period of my life. This new working would forge a bridge from 2012 to 2017, and hopefully, it will help me to forge ahead with additional and new workings.

As a sign of these times, I have already managed to put together a mechanism that will allow me to build up a grimoire based on the fallen angels of the Nephilim. In the next couple of months I hope to have contacted all 20 of the chiefs of the Nephilim instead of just the principal 4. Having evoked and established a bond with the four principals of this group, I will seek to contact the other 16, and entreat them to give me pertinent information about them and also their missing magical seals. To assemble all of this information together into a grimoire will make these spirits fully accessible to the magical public, something that they have been urging me to do for quite sometime now. I had started the book of the Nephilim decades ago, but I have only managed to produce two volumes, but nothing that would actually assist someone in being to follow in my magical footsteps. That will change, hopefully this year. It is one of the legacy items that I want to leave to the occult magical posterity.

I assembled a plan or sequence of magical workings that I would perform in order to complete the five year commemoration and bring my magical process into the present. Here are the sequence of dates that I planned on doing these workings. Of course, what actually happened was quite different, which is not too unusual for a planned series of magical workings.

April 22 - Saturday: Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite. First time shakedown performance of this rite. Started at around 9 pm after dark. This rite is used for ritual magical uncrossing and internal/external issue resolution. My intention was to eliminate obstructions that have kept me from performing magical ordeal workings and break the ice of over 4 years of dormancy - if such obstructions exist. New Moon was on April 26, so this working would be performed as the moon is waning towards the new phase. This timing seemed to be auspicious.

[Notes: The ritual was performed, but the magical working was awkward because of a lack of practice and problems with focusing. However it did indeed work and produced some immediately amazing experiential results. I felt like a burden was removed from me and that I experienced a greater free flowing influx of spiritual and magical insights and communication than previously. Like the beginning of a work-out regimen, I started out weakly and had problems with the ritual. The directions were not easy to understand and I had not actually studied the ritual before the working, having assumed that I wouldn’t need to do this kind of preparation. I was wrong, but despite these problems, the imagery that the ritual produced was quite amazing. I have gone over the ritual and modified the directions so that it is more clear. I also feel that I should perform this rite again in the near future so see if it can be performed more smoothly and therefore have a greater impact. My lady attended this rite and she also found the imagery to be quite fascinating. We went over some of it together after the rite was completed.]

Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the rest of this well planned out schedule, since other things intervened and forced me to change my plans. Here is the rest of the plan as I had intended to execute it.

May 13 - Saturday: Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual. This ritual will set in motion the magical machine consisting of the seven metallic planetary-elemental talismans. This is a working that I had planned to do sometime in 2013, but I didn’t get around to doing it. While I have felt the impact of all seven of these metallic talismans in my temple, and I believe that I have benefitted because of them, this working will forge them into a proper magical machine. I will use the inauguration of this rite to set in motion some Mercury based aspirations, such as success in my IT business endeavors and further insights in the area of magic and occultism. I also want to charm my future writing projects, most notably, my new book proposal “Magical Power for Witches” that I will assemble this summer and submit to for publication in the autumn. Full Moon is on May 10, so this working will be within the orb of full to the gibbous waning moon.

May 27 - Saturday: Invocation of Hermes Thoth Trismagistos - using the Enochian Planetary Vortex rite, I will reconnect with Hermes Thoth as a precursor to the Talismanic Portae Lucis. The moon is New on May 25, so this just past the dark of the moon as it begins to wax towards full. Because this is a Memorial Day weekend, I could also attempt to perform the Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite on Friday or Sunday evening.

June 10 - Saturday: No Working Planned - this is the night immediately following the Full Moon, and as such, it is the last full moon before the Summer Solstice. It might be a good time to perform some kind of working, perhaps even another attempt at the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate working.

June 20 - 21 - Tuesday and Wednesday: Talismanic Portae Lucis fifth anniversary re-enactment. Perform the last steps of the Talismanic Portae Lucis working. Summer Solstice for CDT at 11:24 pm Tuesday. On June 17 - 18, preparation work for the ordeal: Eneagram rite for Sephiroth, and Double Tetrahedral Gate for pathworking. Take Tuesday and Wednesday as vacation days, perform the Portae Lucis rite on Tuesday evening. Morning salutation of the Sun’s rising on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Target rite is the Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual, to be performed on or near the evening time of the advent of the Summer Solstice.

I had planned on performing the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual as a preparation working to the actual re-doing of the Portae Lucis ordeal. However, when the date came due, I had other things to occupy my time and I stopped following my well structured plan. I felt that something wasn’t quite right and that what I had planned on doing wouldn’t accomplish what I wanted it to. It was frustrating and I felt like I was losing the magical grove that I had attempted to established by building up a time-table and a planned sequence of events. I did perform a short-hand invocation of Hermes Thoth, but that was at the request of my wife, even though it did fit one of the items that I had on my check list. That working was performed in an ad hoc manner on Sunday evening on May 14. Still, I felt indecisive and incapable of moving forward. It seemed that my plans were going to end in failure. The days for the individual workings passed with nothing being accomplished and I felt no inspiration to do any of things that I had planned, as the Summer Solstice grew ever closer.

One evening, a week or so before the Summer Solstice, as I was falling asleep I felt a presence and heard a voice say in my mind, “You have performed this ordeal previously, so it isn’t important to redo or revisit it. What you need to do is to perform the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual as the final piece of this working.” When I heard this voice and sensed this presence, it was like a light went off in my head. This was the answer that I was looking for! I felt a potent affirmation, but I also felt silly for not realizing that this was the missing piece that I had been searching for all along. A few days later, while exploring this possibility, I realized that not only could I just perform this ritual, but that I should also perform section 4 - Erecting the Ascension Gate as found in the Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual. I would perform that section once the magical machine had been fully activated and I had placed within it the sigil that I would craft and consecrate. I planned on taking Tuesday afternoon off from work and all of Wednesday, so I would be free to begin the working Tuesday evening just after sunset.

In the afternoon of June 20, I performed all of the preparatory work and drew a set of three sigils on a piece parchment that represented what I wanted to accomplish in the next couple of years. I set up the temple so that I could perform a Mass and charge the sigil parchment with the consecrated wine from the Mass. Then I ate a light meal and did some miscellaneous and mindless tasks until the appointed time. I felt really excited and also very calm at the same time.

At just before 9 pm, I performed the final set up preparations and I was ready to begin the working. I erected and consecrated the magic circle at 9 pm when the sun had just set, and then I proceeded to perform the Mass of the Goddess. While I was performing this rite I briefly wondered if I would have the stamina to get through all of the work that was planned for that evening, thinking of what I had experienced back in April. However, I was very focused, energized and felt very good, so what doubts I may have had were quickly dispelled. I got through the Mass, charged the sigil and then set things up for the next rite. Even though I have never performed the Talismanic Septagramic Vortex Gate ritual before that evening, I went through it without any difficulties - my execution of that rite was smooth and efficient. When I got to the ritual climax and set the charged talisman into the septagramic trigon and drew the angles for the Sun, Jupiter and Mercury, I felt or sensed a distinct resonance, as if the etheric “gears, cogs and wheels” of a magical machine were set into motion.

I then performed the Ascension Gate ritual part from the Triple Tetrahedral Gate ritual and I saw the same strange prismatic equilateral triangle gateway energy field, reflecting and refracting light as if it were a piece of glass as previously. I saw ghostly visual images appear and disappear on the surface of that mirror gate and I felt it resonate as if it were giving off deep tones that were below my threshold of hearing. I sensed them more than heard them. Then I sat down and meditated in this amazing energy field, realizing that I had indeed tapped into the ordeal working that I had performed nearly five years ago. It was as fresh and alive as if I had just performed the entire ordeal from scratch. I was amazed at this revelation, and I exulted in it for a while. I also heard or sensed a voice speaking to me, and this is what I heard. “The Portae Lucis, once opened, is never closed. It is always there, within your heart, mind and soul. While you were distracted for years, it continued to be active and it only required you to focus on it for this anniversary in order for you to be reawakened to its power and majesty.” The words were repeated several times and I felt them reverberate within my deepest and innermost self. I was truly grateful that I had so successfully reconnected to this magical process.

As I sat in deep meditation, I felt a deep level of fulfillment and clarity. I knew that whatever happened to me, I would always have this connection within me. Perhaps all I needed to regain what I had achieved was to become deeply aware that all of the magic that I have performed is concentrated within my very soul, and it is that source to which I must turn as age and the diminishment of mortality takes its toll on my body and mind. Perhaps this is why I have ardently studied Zen Buddhism for the last nine months, because I needed the triple wisdom of Samadhi, Sila and Prajna to help get me to that wondrous state of imperturbability, and then achieving that state on a periodic basis has allowed me to listen and be mindful of what I have already achieved throughout my magical practice.

After meditating in that state for a while, I came to normal consciousness and decided to bring the working to a close, so I sealed up the gateways and performed the final Eastern gateway passage into the waking world of light. As I finished up, I noticed the time was right around 11:30 pm, which was exact moment of the Summer Solstice. I had completed this working in the exact timing necessary and had accomplished all that I set out to do. I was highly energized and felt exalted. I stayed up for while and then prepared for bed, which I entered and fell deeply asleep, dreaming of the dawning of the longest day of the year.

Just before I retired for the night, I went outside for a bit and watched the stars twinkling distantly over my head. I noticed that the constellations of summer were now apparent, and that the evening was buzzing with a specialness and importance that seemed to augur a new beginning for me and my occult work. Time will tell whether this was just a fluke or the beginning of something big, but I did feel that the biggest and greatest discoveries were yet in the future instead of being the relics of past glory dimly remembered in my past.

A few days later and I am still feeling very blissful and happy about this latest working. I am amazed at how it proceeded, and how it took a very circuitous but creative detour. I never really lost faith that I would somehow find a way to complete this work and pick up the threads. Now what I need to do is to work with what I have started and perform other workings as the year progresses. It would seem that 2017 is for the dawning of a new cycle, and it is my hope that there will be more interesting events to report to you, my readers.

Monday, March 13, 2017

We are fast approaching the Vernal Equinox, and once again, I will be giving a lecture at the Minneapolis Paganicon convention. This time I will be giving a presentation entitled “Egyptian Mysteries: Am Duat and the Cycle of Life and Death.” I have put together a PowerPoint presentation deck and will be doing both a lecture and presentation about how the Egyptian Book of the Amduat was the unwitting precursor to the Tarot Trump based Hero’s Journey, not be confused with the Fool’s Journey.

I have long stated that the Hero’s Monomyth, based on Joseph Campbell’s book “Hero with a Thousand Faces” is the pattern for all transformative initiations, and that it aligns with the Cosmogonic cycle. The Monomyth has 17 stages, and the Cosmogonic has five, and that when jointed together it becomes the consummate transformative cycle that can profoundly change an individual as well as an entire society. The merging of the Hero’s individual cycle and the Cosmogonic cycle (17 + 5) is also represented by the 22 Trumps of the Tarot. The Egyptians proposed this joining of the individual and cosmogonic cycles in the Book of the Amduat, which they graphically illustrated in New Kingdom sarcophagus chambers of the Pharaohs, starting with Thutmose III, the first of the great empire building pharaohs.

While it is probably unlikely that this book, in its various renditions and versions, found its way into the occultism of Europe, it is intriguing to speculate whether or not the idea of the merging the individual cycle of transformation and the cosmogonic cycle may have had an Egyptian source. These underworld books continued to be a part of the mortuary literature even up to the Ptolemaic period, and could have been incorporated into the Isian Greco-Roman cult. There is no evidence for this claim, so we can’t make it. However, it is interesting to see this as a possibility, thereby making true Aleister Crowley’s claim that the Tarot was actually the mythic “Book of Thoth” whose magic and revelations of the mysteries of life and death would given immortality to whoever possessed it and knew how to employ its magical powers.

I will be giving this presentation on Sunday, at 2:45 pm at Paganicon. The actual room is to be determined, but if you are in town you might want to attend this presentation. I think that it is a good and thought provoking lecture. We will also take a tour through the 12 hours of the Book of Amduat as it is depicted in Thutmose’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. I was also lucky enough to see a mock up of this section of the tomb at a traveling museum show at the Milwaukee County Museum back in 2004. I have been deeply fascinated and intrigued with this graphic presentation of the Amduat ever since I saw it in that traveling show.

Additionally, I have recently written up a ritual that uses the transformative theme of the 12 hours of the Amduat to enact a powerful and decisive uncrossing ritual. The idea is that to undergo the transformation of the sun god Ra and his regeneration through the power of Osiris, the magician can break through any blockages or resistance to achieving a specific goal in one’s life path.

Here is the preamble to the ritual text.

“This ritual is powerful enough to overcome all obstructions (intimate and external) and thereby performs a kind of grand uncrossing spell that helps the practitioner to break free and to see his or her way to a final resolution of any matter. Therefore, this rite should be performed only after much soul-searching and internal investigation, and then the celebrant would be advised to put as much preparation and effort into the rite as possible.

However, it would also be wise to thoroughly understand the nature of the blockage and then to encapsulate it with a consecrated and charged sigil, which would be taken with the seeker through the ritual passage. This rite uses the Egyptian underworld passage of the 12 hours of the Amduat, which is a simultaneous merging of the cosmogonic and individual transformative cycle. It is the mythic theme used to break through any and all obstructions to achieve its goal, just as the Sun God Ra does every evening when he seeks to be reborn and regenerated to bring forth a new day. This theme was the basic pattern of the underworld passage whereby an individual could become one of the divine ancestors by following the pattern of the Sun God himself.

The Egyptian Underworld Ascension rite is divided into three basic sections. The first section is a simple Western oriented gateway consisting of three points that opens the celebrant to the underworld. The second section consists of an inverted pyramid representing the five trials of the underworld that must be overcome so that a successful regeneration and rebirth might occur. The inverted pyramid is a vortex structure, since all four nodes of the four watchtowers are joined together at the nadir/infrapoint, and the structure is built using a widdershins transit.

The third and final section is the Eastern Gate, which represents the hours leading up to the ascendancy of the Sun and the ‘coming forth by day.’ The Eastern gateway has four points instead of three, with the zenith/ultrapoint functioning as a tetrahedral gate where the sunrise appears at the apex. There are 3 points in the first section, 5 in the second and 4 in the last, representing a total of 12 points, which allots one point for each hour of the Amduat.

Each of the Amduat hours is characterized by the hours of the thematic passage along with 16 of the 32 decan gods. Since a decan hour lasts approximately 40 minutes according to ancient Egyptian night-time stellar plotting, each Amduat hour has at least one decan, and every other hour has two. Thus, three decans together equal two hours exactly (40 * 3 = 60 * 2 = 120). This also means that the even numbered hours have two decan godheads, and the odd numbered hours have just one, making for 16 overall. Double decans use a pylon structure to unite them, thus producing a very interesting and elegant ritual structure.

The western gateway has one pylon in the West, the inverted pyramid has three pylons - the East, West and center. And the tetrahedral Eastern gateway has two pylons in the Southwest and Northwest angles, respectively. The pylons add a certain elegance to the overall ritual structure, allowing for the unequal proportion of decan hours to actual hours.”

I haven’t had a chance to work this ritual, but it is on my list to perform in the very near future. Things have been so very busy for me since the Solstice holiday that I haven’t had a lot of time to engage in my magical work. While that might be so, I have been involved with some very heavy and intense training classes on Zen Buddhism given at the local Zendo by two individuals who I have come to see as quite brilliant and accomplished in their own path. They have between them around 90 years of experience, and had studied and worked closely with the Zen master Dainin Katagiri Roshi while he was alive. I am, to say the least, quite impressed with both of these teachers, but I will write more about them and my studies in a future article.

Anyway, if you can get to Paganicon and attend, then I hope to see you there. I will have copies of my newest book, and you can purchase an autographed copy from me there.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Now that I have more or less recovered from my eye surgery, I can finally get back to the business of writing articles in my blog. I have been absent since late December, and quite a lot has been going on since then, both from the standpoint of the occult, politics and my life situation. Hopefully, I will have time to write up on these and many other topics in the weeks to come. Not being able to read for more than a week, and not being able to perform much in the way of extracurricular writing (outside of work) has been quite difficult for me to manage and quietly accommodate. I love to read and write, but for nearly a month I had to keep my writing to a minimum to give my eyes a chance to fully recover, and not subject them overly to eye strain. Now that I have passed that period of recovery, I can fully pursue my writing tasks.

After the holidays, and in the middle January, my book project, “Spirit Conjuring for Witches: Magical Evocation Simplified” was at long last published. I got my printed copies around that time, and the book was released a week or so later, well before the February 8 launch date. I have been quite pleased with the book so far, and so have others who have read it and posted reviews. You can find this book on Amazon here.

The user named Jeannot left a very helpful and good review on Amazon, and it was the very first review. Here is what she had to say:

“Let's start off with a basic preliminary statement: this book is not for beginning magical practitioners in the way of providing magical tech; in that sense, it is geared more for intermediate practitioners. That said, this book is excellent at giving beginners goals to aspire to.

Frater Barrabbas does a fascinating and excellent job of reintegrating the concept of the witch's familiar into modern practice, putting it in a modern context with roots going back beyond Medieval and Early Modern European incarnations of the spirit helper. He relates it to the "head gods" of African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and the various spirit helpers of the PGM, or Greek Magical Papyri. For those who are willing to put in the work, I'm sure this book will provide much fruit.

This book stands with the work of Gordon White, Jake Stratton-Kent, and Peter Grey. Frater Barrabbas provides a witchcraft that is vital, active, and local, capable of functioning in the witch's immediate environment.”

Being compared to Gordon White, Jake Stratton-Kent or Peter Grey is quite complimentary, although I consider them to be authors who have written books quite beyond what I set out to do with this book. I guess the most important question that one might have about this book has less to do with the material within than for the motivation for me to write it. Why did I write this book? Is it yet another book proposing that Witches adopt the practices and methodologies of the Ceremonial Magician? Well, the answer to that is no, it was not my intention to sell the techniques and methodologies in use by either ceremonial magicians or traditional practitioners of magic as found in the old grimoires. This book was written by a Witch, practicing ritual magic, for other Witches who would wish to also practice this kind of magic. It was not written for either ceremonial magicians nor was it written for the traditional magicians who utilize the old grimoires.

What I am proposing in this book is a system of magic that is distinctly Witchcraft based and not outside of what might be considered the magical practices of that modern tradition. I wrote this book for modern Witches and Wiccans, and my purpose was to introduce to them the practices and techniques already inherent in their traditions to formally summon and manifest spirits. My aim was to help Witches adopt the spirit model of magic and fully develop it as a mainstay of their tradition. It is my hope that this book will start a new wave of Witchcraft magic that will stay abreast of other cutting edge magical traditions. I wanted Witches to expand beyond thaumaturgy and using the simple constructs of the energy model of magic to reach their true potential as magical practitioners, emulating the capabilities and legendary deeds of the mythic Witches of folklore and antiquity. However, I wanted them to use the features and components of their existing traditional modern lore to accomplish this end.

As an observer of modern Witchcraft and Wicca magic, I have noted that these traditions relied too much on one or two models of magic, and that the spirit model was only partially active in these magical practices. One of the reasons that I gave for this lack of a formal system of performing an invocation or an evocation is that such rites and techniques are not to be found in the traditional Book of Shadows, as witnessed by my own Gardnerian third generation BoS. While it is true that old Gerald, to a lesser extent, and Alex Sanders, to a greater extent, practiced grimoire based magic, none of that lore was ever formalized to become part of the tradition of Witchcraft. The closest thing that I have found so far that approached a grimoire based magical type of working was the Vassago goetic demon evocation and scrying session found in the book “Mastering Witchcraft,” and no where else it is so plainly promoted. I had once thought that Paul Huson’s book would have become the basis or the foundation for a deeper form of magical workings, but if it did, that fact was not absorbed into the tradition and passed on. It remained, like the grimoire workings of old Gerald and Alex, an outlier to the practice of modern Witchcraft.

Needless to say, the book “Mastering Witchcraft” and others like it didn’t propose a comprehensive and formal system of invocation and evocation, so the spirit model of magic was never really a part of traditional modern Witchcraft. It never really caught on, probably because in order to be adopted, it would have required some rather major changes to the practice and celebration of Witchcraft. As a system of magic, the spirit model doesn’t lend itself easily to coven based magic. For instance, if a coven were to perform a goetic evocation then only one individual would actually do the work and the others would function as helpers or just witnesses. Since everyone who practices magic has different capabilities, it is possible that while the leader performing the rite would be in full possession of her skills and abilities as a Witch, others might not get as much out of the rite. Being able to translate and assimilate spirit contact is something that has to be learned and mastered over time with lots of experiences. Certainly, it wouldn’t be a good idea to expose newly initiated or uninitiated members of the coven to this kind of working, so it would be something to which only a more experienced or mature group should be exposed. That is because the key to controlling and mastering the encounter with spirits is the active godhead assumption, and without this mechanism to guide and protect the practitioner, spirit conjuring could be considered a hazardous operation.

Perhaps one of the most important contributions that my book makes is to equate the familiar spirit of antiquity with the modern day godhead assumption of practical magic. That this practice found its way into the BTW and Wiccan traditions as a major liturgical rite from a basic exercise in the Golden Dawn system of magic shouldn’t be too surprising. What is surprising is that such a liturgical rite in Witchcraft has an ancient pedigree going back into antiquity, as the Greek Magical Papyri has amply shown. It was an important and pivotal rite in antiquity, where a magician sought and achieved a spirit mediator to assist in his magical workings. Those who practiced magic in antiquity, and even more recently as the 16th and 17th centuries believed that human nature, without the aid of a spirit helper or some other supernatural assistance, was quite helpless, defenseless against spirits and deities and incapable of producing magical or miraculous effects. It was only in the 19th century that the belief in the power of untapped human potential became an important theme in magic and occultism. That theme went on to produce the energy model of magic, and it supplanted many of the other systems of magic until the last twenty years or so. We who practice magic now realize that a greater capability lies in the use of all of the models of magic simultaneously, but in the traditions of Witchcraft, formal adoption of the spirit model still lags the other techniques.

Making the godhead assumption, called the "Draw" in Wiccan-speak, into a personal ritual of self-empowerment seems like a profanation of the liturgical nature of this rite. However, it isn’t a profanation, it is an obvious magical expansion of a mechanism that is used to facilitate communion with the covenstead godhead to one that elevates the individual, temporarily, to the level of an earth-bound and incarnated deity. Performing this rite continually over time will dramatically impact and affect the consciousness of the practitioner, transforming and empowering them over the long course of a magical practice. Additionally, such a rite is more suited to working alone or with only the most intimate group, since the celebrant is sharing something that is extremely personal and private, so that it remains detached from any kind of egoic corruption. There is nothing quite like the ego trip of someone who forces his or her group to engage in worshiping them as they assume the simulacrum of some godhead. Godhead assumption must be balanced with a great deal of humility and service to the deity so that it doesn’t regress into a form of unearned ego-based self glorification.

Another mechanism that has to be altered is the covenstead magical circle and the invested dual deities and dread lords of the four quarters that ward and protect what transpires within it. Certainly, in order to take full advantage of working within a magic circle that represents the boundary of all that is sacred and spiritual, a Witch has to deliberately thwart the inherent protective measures that such a mechanism provides. Opening up the magic circle to the whole of the spirit world (instead of the covenstead protected simulacrum) is an important first step, since by crossing the circle watchtowers, making therein a cross-roads, will open that sacred space to everything that is within the spirit world. Someone who deliberately performs this act must first adopt a personal godhead assumption in order to protect themselves from negative, hostile or callous neutral spiritual encounters.

Anyway, these topics and many others are discussed in detail in my book. These are not new ideas, because I have written about them previously, but now I have collected them altogether into a single, concise book. I think that you will find this book to be useful and hopefully, it will have an impact on the greater world of Modern Witchcraft.

Frater Barrabbas

Some minor errors found in the current edition.

After carefully reading over my copy of the book, I have found a few errors in the book, particularly Appendix 2, p. 234. The actual date of the Grimoirum Verum is likely to be the early 1600's, and not the 1500's as I had written. According to Joseph Peterson, the direct precursor to the Grimiorum Verum was a book entitled "Clavicula Solomonis De Secretis" and the extent copy of this book is a Polish Leipzig version dated around 1620's. It is likely that the Grimoirum Verum was produced not long after that time, but it still predated the Goetia, probably by a couple of decades. While I had submitted edits that would have corrected these dates, for some reason that didn't get installed, perhaps because they might have been confusing to the editor who had recourse to my emails but not to me directly. Anyway, this is minor point, but I felt the need to clarify in this article. I am sure that there are probably other inaccuracies, but overall, I feel that the editing and writing for this book is one of the best that I, in combination with the Llewellyn team, have produced so far.

Friday, December 23, 2016

A while back I wrote an article about the 40 Qualified Powers, which are a useful set of energies and they have a comparative utility to the 16 Elementals. You can find that article here, but I have had further thoughts about these energies and I wanted to put them into an article that would work along with what I have already written. The ritual pattern that is used to generate the 40 Qualified Powers is called the “Pyramid of Powers” rite can be found in my book entitled “Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - Omnibus Edition.” The rituals is examined in chapter 7 of Book 2, and the Qualified Powers are defined in chapter 8 of Book 2. I would recommend getting this book and adding it to your collection because there a quite a number of useful ritual patterns and open-source rituals in that work.

There are a number of different ways that one can utilize the Tarot as a magical tool, since it is a repository of quite a large number of magical and occult correspondences. The Tarot and the Qabalah are intertwined, particularly in the 19th and 20th century European occult versions of those disciplines. A magician can take a certain specific point of reference and look at the Tarot in that manner to discover all sorts of useful symbologies and practical referential correspondences. One such perspective is to look at the Tarot through the perspective of magical energy. What one would find would be three groups of magical powers. The first would be the sixteen elementals based on the court cards, the second would be the forty qualified powers, and the last would be the transformative powers of the twenty-two trumps of the major arcana. One could also split off the four aces to produce the foundational structure of the spiritual dimension of the four Elements.

Similarly, one could also look at the Tarot through the perspective of spirits, and with this perspective a whole array of a spiritual hierarchy would be revealed. There would be the hierarchy of the 36 astrological decans, the sixteen elementals spirits (as found in either the angelic or Enochian systems of magic), and the interaction of the various spirits associated with both the cycle of initiation and the cosmogonic creation/dissolution cycles of the trumps. Either approach, energy or spirit, will reveal the powerful magical underpinnings of the Tarot. The energy perspective reveals the magical powers that are available to the magician using the energy model of magic, and the spirit perspective reveals the spiritual hierarchy that is available for the magician to conjure. Additionally, the 36 decan based number or Naib cards, represent an actual spiritual domain that is grounded in the zodiacal hierarchy that permeates the three spherical levels of celestial, earth and underworld. The Tree of Life can also be mapped to this structure, although not in a very clean and concise manner unless the four Qabalistic Worlds are employed.

Therefore, the Tarot is a very powerful repository of all things occult and magical, and it could be considered the preeminent magical grimoire. I have also written about this concept in one of my articles, and you can find it here. While quite a number of magicians are examining and studying the latest in published grimoires and expounding about the latest developments in the arena of evocation and spirit conjuring, one book is typically ignored. That book is the redoubtable Tarot, which was fashioned to be the basis for all forms of magic in the Western Mystery tradition. If a student were to study the Tarot in a great deal of depth and intensity then I believe that such a person would be able to expand their magical perspective to achieve all magical objectives using both magical energies and spirits embedded within the symbolic correspondences of the humble Tarot cards. It is the most important grimoire and magical treatise of all time, and it is the source for all of the magical and occultic systems in the West. And, it can be used for divination, either to passively receive or actively project the patterns thereby randomly derived. Perhaps one of the greatest exponents of the Tarot is Aleister Crowley’s book “The Book of Thoth.” It was one the last books that he wrote, and it is one of the best, in my opinion.

Getting back to our topic about the Qualified Powers, I have been seeking to encapsulate these magical energies in such a manner that other practitioners of magic would see their utility and usefulness. I had assumed that the Qualified Powers were called such because they were the product of a base element qualified by an attribute of Deity. However, there is more to them than that, or at least that is what I have discovered by pondering them in greater depth. Allow me to explain what I mean by this statement.

Energy magic is typically reduced to working, in some manner, with the four elements. You can readily extend this model to include a number of different qualities of energy, but they are all based on the four elements - Fire, Air, Water and Earth. You can define these four elements in many different ways, including physical, occult and spiritual qualities. In extending the definitions of the four elements you can make their utility more refined and useful. However, you can also do this by combining with other things to create hybrid energy structures. This is the basic concept regarding the energy model of magic that I have employed in my magical system. I don’t know if others have also used this mechanism, but this is what I have found to be quite efficient and useful. The occult and magical symbol for the four elements is the pentagram, which represents the four elements tied to a fifth, which is spirit. In this manner, spirit is said to be the synergetic fusion of all four of the elements - it is the quintessential element. A magician can use the pentagram to generate/invoke or dissolve/banish any of the four elements and spirit. The basic magical technique for generating element powers using a pentagram was first employed in the Golden Dawn rite of the Superior Pentagram.

Now whether these energized elements or their hybrids are seen as being generated through the vital force of the magician’s body or through some symbolic artifice is not particularly important to the energy model. In the version of the energy model of magic that I work, it would seem to me that this energy source has its origin both within my body (as a trigger) and also outside of it. One of the reasons that I believe this is that however much energy I can raise through the artifice of magic, I don’t seem to be draining my own essential energy. Once triggered, it seems as if the magical energy that I have generated for a magical working has an endless supply. I can feel this energy pass through my body, for certain, but the ecstatic results of this energy flow seems beyond what would normally just reside in my body. When using the energy magical techniques and projecting what feels like a considerable force into the material world, I feel highly charged and energized after the working instead of feeling depleted or tired. I always have to ground off the excess in order to keep myself balanced and not emotionally keyed up. Working with the energy based system of magic can make one feel “high” or even drunk because of the emotional impact of the ungrounded energies.

As far as energy hybrids are concerned, I have incorporated three different energy structures, and these can both engage magical energies and energy based spirits. The most basic structure is to be found in the sixteen elementals. These powers consist of the hybrid pair of a qualifying base element combined with the same or another element. The permutation of four produces the number sixteen, so there are sixteen elementals. These energy based entities correspond to the sixteen court cards in the Tarot. You could use just one of these cards as the focus for generating an elemental. The other two are the 28 Lunar Mansions (Talismanic Elemental), which are represented as the hybrid combination of an element and a planet, and the 40 Qualified Powers, which are represented as the hybrid of an element and a Deity attribute.

To generate an elemental I employ the pentagram device and the eight node circle octagram (consisting of a double pyramid) as the ritual pattern used to generate what I call an elemental vortex. I can further qualify this energy by using the Enochian spirit name pair and the Enochian call for a specific elemental. However, an elemental force, even when summoned using a spirit name, has to have some kind of specific magical device to link it to some external objective - known as the magical link. The energy is focused into the center of the magic circle using a deosil circumambulation spiral from the outer periphery of the magic circle to the center. The power is released through the artifice of a widdershins circumambulation spiral from the center to the outer periphery of the magic circle, where the energy is projected outside of the circle as a kind of magical “bolt.” In order for the magical energy to find its target it must first be imprinted with the link, which is usually in the form of a charged or consecrated sigil. I consider an elemental magical power to be “unqualified” because it requires a sigil to imprint and direct it to its objective. As a joke, I often say to my students that elementals are kind of dumb and need to be qualified in order to work.

While the generated elemental is considered an unqualified power, both the Lunar Mansions and the Qualified Powers are qualified powers. What this means is that these magical energies also contain archetypal qualifiers that further define the energy (with a spiritual intelligence) so that it has a specific function and objective already determined. Both of these energy systems don't require the imprint of a magical link in order to set them to a specific objective. By definition, these kinds of magical energies already have an objective, and that is why I refer to them as qualified powers. You can use a sigil to imprint and further refine their innate function, but it is not required. Once generated and released, qualified energies will automatically empower the magician’s intention to fulfill the working’s magical objective. Thus qualified powers are also intelligent magical energies, since they are imbued with an archetypal intelligence. The 28 Lunar Mansions are actually a subset of the 40 Qualified Powers, since the seven planetary archetypes are included in the 10 attributes of the Deity.

The structure used to generate one of the Qualified Power is the magical pyramid vortex, and the device is the pentagram. The focusing and exteriorizing spirals are used just as they are in the Elemental Octagram, but the focused element energy field is imprinted with a symbol and quality of attribute of the Deity. This causes a fusion, within the vortex field, of the element and attribute, thereby qualifying the magical energy. One could also further qualify it by performing an invocation of a specific polytheistic Deity, vibrating a Qabalistic Sephirah Godname, or even just using the Tarot card itself. The magician should make certain that the energy is fully imprinted so that there appears to be a kind of energized Godform in the center of the circle. Then when this qualified energy is released in the same manner as an elemental, it will intelligently and automatically proceed outward from the circle to fulfill its objective. The ritual to generate a Qualified Power is more simple than the ritual used to generate an elemental, and since there are 40 different powers, one can have a greater variety from which to choose. As I said, you can also use a sigil to give a qualified power even more of a precise focus, but it is not required. All that is required is to develop a mechanism for symbolically defining one of the ten Deity attributes.

Coincidentally, the technique for using the 40 Qualified Powers was something that I learned using a very simple cone of power augmented by setting an invoking pentagram of a specific element to the four watchtowers and then imprinting that energy using one of the 10 Qabalistic Godnames. It was a very simple version of the Pyramid of Power rite, but it was amazingly effective. I was taught this simple technique in the old Alexandrian coven in which I first learned how to work real magic. Sometimes I wonder if any other Witches perform this kind of simple but effective magic.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

I am a member of the O.T.O. and I am sometimes active in my local body. For me it is social engagement and also a mechanism through which I can get some degree of peer review and swap ideas about magic and occultism. While the methodologies that I use to perform magic are quite different than those of my fellow Thelemites, I feel a degree of alignment with the purposes and focus of many of the members of this order. I am a ritual magician with peculiar beliefs and practices, but despite my different approach and occult perspectives, I can find a welcoming place in the local body with my fellow lodge members. That being said, I can also state that I am probably a poor representative for any kind of classical approach to the O.T.O., since I am, at best, something of a reluctant Thelemite.

There are reasons for my one-off approach to magic and occultism, and even polytheism, when it comes to the classical Thelemite approach to these disciplines. In a few words, as one O.T.O. member once said, I “stink” of Witchcraft. That means my magical practices, occult ideals and polytheistic tendencies are grounded in my first love, which was British Traditional Witchcraft. Yes indeed, I do stink pretty foully of Witchcraft, and it colors everything that I do. It also makes me a reluctant Thelemite, since my whole approach to magic, paganism and the occult is firmly within the Witchcraft world-view. Allow me to explain what these differences are in greater detail. Let’s also keep in mind that I don’t consider myself an expert regarding Thelema or the canon of the O.T.O. As a reluctant Thelemite my understanding of this creed could be considered quite flawed.

As a Witch, I do not consider myself “one of the people of the book.” Witches don’t possess or adhere to a sacred document considered to be sacred writ and wholly unchangeable. We have a Book of Shadows, but that is a book of liturgy that was never meant to be changeless, since liturgical rites can and should be modified to make them better fit the times and the places where they are performed. As a comparison, the Catholics have radically changed their primary liturgical rite called the Mass, but they have not changed the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Yet Witches don’t have a testament or any kind of sacred writ, so as polytheists, our knowledge of the sacred is to be found in the actual experience and direct encounter with our Deities. Presence of Deity at a specific place and time represents the greatest mystery and the source of our spiritual faith, the other mysteries are about the fundamental attributes of human life (and all life in general), which is birth and death. It might be somewhat different for each and everyone of us, but that is the nature of a true polytheistic faith. Words get in way if they attempt to concretely define something that cannot even be adequately described.

Perhaps one of the primary characteristics of Monotheistic religions in the West is that they are exclusively a counter or protest religious movement against the status quo of the time. Jews created a counter movement against ancient Egyptian polytheism. Christians created a counter movement against classical Greco-Roman polytheism, Protestants rebelled against Catholicism, and Islam created a counter movement against Semitic/Arab polytheism. Each of these religions proposes an absolute Deity and an absolute religious truth, and although the Deity that they identify with is pretty much the same, their differences are the basis of a disagreement of opposing absolute truths. It is the foundation of monotheism (and the source of its problems) that a single absolute deity must be the one and only deity, and that the religious canon based on that deity must and should be written down into sacred writings, representing the one and only version of the truth.

Those of us who have rejected this notion of a single and absolute religious truth see the folly of these minor distinctions between monotheistic creeds and understand the need to achieve religious tolerance and a peaceful coexistence. (We do this for no other reason than to ensure our own survival.) I have also previously stated that the foundation of the world religions is based on the same kind of human interactions with the phenomenon of spirit, and that either they are all correct or none of them are correct. Since religions are continually nourished by people having personal religious experiences, one could conclude that the very existence of this phenomenon would preclude any kind of scientific dismissal. The truth is that billions of people have these experiences every day. Yet while the religious based myths are open to question among non-believers, if they remain in the context of religious myths then no one can actually refute them. They are subject to criticism especially if they are promoted as historical facts verified only by faith, such as how monotheistic religions represent their myths. A point of irony here is that science itself has been shaped by the monotheistic philosophies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, so it could hardly function as a counter movement to the spiritual “opiates” of western religion.

One exception to this particular examination of monotheistic religions having sacred writings is, of course, Hinduism. The sacred writings of Hinduism, however, are more the exponents of liturgy, philosophy and meditation techniques, as well as embodying many religious myths and stories that are assiduously kept bounded in that wondrous domain. What Hinduism doesn’t have is a historical narrative of a single absolute deity intermixed with various associated absolute religious truths disguised as laws. Perhaps the most salient point that the religion of Hinduism makes is that there are a myriad of deities everywhere and no actual absolute truth, but many great truths bound together within the various cultic religious centers. Hinduism might be a good representative of what western polytheism would ultimately achieve if it continues for the next several centuries. While sacred writings are important to Hinduism, the foundation for that religion is to be found in the various shrines and religious cultic centers where the presence of deity is maintained at all times.

Getting back to the theme of this article, I have made the point that monotheism relies on sacred writings and represents a spiritual break from or antithesis to the status quo. I have also stated that I have rejected the absolute qualities of the theology and canon of such religions, since they would seek to cancel out the truths that I possess based on personal experience with my Deities. If religious tolerance is to be maintained then those who are not part of a religion must reject these stated absolute truths and instead declare that they are actually relative. Taking this kind of stand makes me an outlier to all forms and creeds of monotheism. It also makes me a reluctant Thelemite.

As I have stated, monotheistic religions have a common cause or origin in that they are religious protest movements against the status quo. Yet in many ways, Thelema is also a protest movement against 19th Christianity, particularly the strict dominionist practices and beliefs of the Plymouth Brethren. Crowley’s natal church was the Plymouth Brethren, and it could be said that the religion that he founded was a particular antithesis movement to that kind of strict Protestant Christianity. Yet Aleister Crowley was not content to just break from his family’s church and faith in order to engage with a different religious perspective, much as what many of us did back in the 70's and 80's. He created a powerful anti-Protestant Christian movement that used the tropes of that religion to found his own religious perspective. He called himself the “Great Beast - 666” and reveled in the very symbols of the Apocalypse as laid down in the New Testament book “Revelations.” It was the Protestant Christians who made this book into a kind of revealed truth about the forthcoming end times, and the Plymouth Brethren were particularly engaged with this theme. The themes and ideation of the book of Revelations were suffused into the Book of the Law and also powerfully colored Crowley’s experiences as depicted in the Vision and the Voice, where he evoked the spirits of the Enochian Aethyrs. Crowley believed that he was the prophet of a New Aeon who would bring forth a new religion that would countermand and even abrogate the religions of the status quo. This was also affirmed by various passages of the Book of the Law.

If we take Thelema as based on Crowley’s exegesis then we can see that it becomes a specific protest movement against Protestant Christianity. It takes the themes and tropes of Christianity, especially the messianic formulations of the end times, and inverts them so that the New Aeon represents the end of Christianity and the birth of Thelema. The Great Beast becomes a prophet of the New Aeon, the Whore of Babylon becomes the chief priestess and initiator. The Crowned and Conquering Child is not Jesus, the Lamb of God, but the Anti-Christ as the proponent of the New World Order. The Book of the Law thus becomes the sacred writ of this new creed, and the canon is established as a kind of prophetic absolute truth - not to be changed or modified. While the practice of magic and exploratory occultism are the primary religious practices of this new creed, and coincidentally there are no attempts at purifying or forcibly unifying the beliefs of those who nominally accept this creed and perform this magic and speculative occultism, the model for Thelema is based on the monotheism of Protestant Christianity. What that means is that this apparent inclusiveness could change to become a kind of rigid exclusiveness based on the sacralization of the writings of Aleister Crowley. Some have gone so far as to see in the Book of the Law a kind of inculcation and promotion of a form of religious fascism.

Despite its promotion as a limited kind of polytheism (based on a trinity of primary Deities and two human representatives), Thelema is similar to a kind of monotheism, thus having more in common with its adversarial creeds than with what would be considered a purer or detached kind of revised polytheism. Crowley was vigorously and angrily reacting against his natal faith and the church of his family, and this unfortunately has impacted everything that he wrote. An objective examination of Crowley’s writings and even the Book of the Law shows this to be a clear and even obvious case. These anti Christian elements of Thelema are problematic to me because I have rejected the tropes and creed of Christianity altogether. What I don’t want to do is to have to revisit them once again in the guise of a supposedly polytheistic and occult based religious system.

Curiously and ironically, we are today suffering from the affects of the dominionist creed of Evangelical Protestant Christianity that was spawned by the Plymouth Brethren. That version of Christianity has invaded our nation’s politics and has bolstered the white supremacy movement to produce the troubled combination of right-wing politics and the ascendancy of the presidency of Donald Trump. Perhaps Thelema might be considered an antidote to the terrible times that we live in, but it would have to become much more popular than it is to culturally oppose and defeat Evangelical Christianity. Then there would be the problem that in order to be so popular, Thelema would have to be modified to be ever more like Christianity, which would certainly end my interest in it.

Since the current O.T.O organization allows for a plurality of beliefs and perspectives within its ranks, I can belong to this organization without having to strictly adhere to its canon and beliefs. I am certainly a practicing magician and occultist who is seeking to discover the truth for myself. I acknowledge many of the ideas put forth by the religion of Thelema, but I also have a lot of doubts and points where I am not in alignment with that faith. I am puzzled by the Book of the Law, liking some passages, rejecting others, and then finding yet other passages that are confusing or unclear to me. Since I don’t accept any specific book as representing my beliefs or my faith, I am unable to accept the Book of the Law wholly and completely as holy writ representing my religious beliefs. I suspect that other Thelemites also question various passages of the Book of the Law, and that the necessity of following or adhering to one’s true will (“Do What Thou Wilt Is The Whole of Law”) abrogates any kind of surrender to a strict adherence to this book. I also belief in “Love” as the primary force that draws us all together and mitigates our differences, but I believe that a complete surrender to this emotion is folly, therefore, “Love Under Will.”

In accepting these basic premises one could say that I am a Thelemite, but I would claim to be one that is plagued by doubt, different perspectives and different religious experiences. I cannot accept the creed of Thelema without also keeping these differences and objections at the fore-front of my mind. If I belonged to a Christian or Islamic sect, I would have been forcefully ejected quite some time ago, since I would have refused to adopt a strict adherence to the basic creed. I also still have the terrible habit of asking too many damned questions, and this certainly got me kicked out of Sunday school when I was a troubled and disruptive adolescent.

Additionally, as part of my own magical exegesis I discovered that Thelema was only one of a four-part gnostic perspective on magical truth. The other three were Agape, Eros and Thanatos. These would represent Will, Love, Desire and Death, respectively. The central unifying gnostic attribute was Astreas, or the Star, which represents the fusion of all four gnostic qualities into a singular spiritual expression. Every man and woman might be a star, but then so are the deities, and so is the representation of the One. It was this theme that inspired me to write up five different Mass rites and their associated liturgies, and I continue to work with them to this day.

I do find common cause with Thelema and Thelemites, and I also find their magical workings and occultism to be quite excellent and relevant to my own. I consider Aleister Crowley to be one of my many spiritual ancestors and I still read his writings to this day. I have a different perspective and also different practices to be sure, but I also have a basic understanding that dovetails quite nicely with Thelema as I understand it. As long as Thelema and the O.T.O. promotes self-discovery and doesn’t try to coerce a single definition and creed upon its members, I believe that I will continue to work with them and be a somewhat active member. I might be a reluctant Thelemite, but I do acknowledge those with whom I have common interests, practices and beliefs. May this relationship continue during this difficult and challenging time in which we live.